


rinse & repeat

by billdenbrough (kunimi)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Angst, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Heavy Angst, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, a broken fix-it?, and this fic is me exploring that concept in a divergent way, but yeah seriously angst warning, eddie is in love with richie and he survived c2 but it's still sad, it is a novel/franchise to me about companionship & love & forgetting & the cost of memory, it's 'Eddie Kaspbrak Lives' and then the follow up: 'Is That Enough?', kind of ambiguous ending but i wouldn't describe it as happy so please keep it in mind, or like it's if you broke a fix it, rated mature for subject matter - there's no explicit content it's just heavy grief yk, to be clear though this is NOT a fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kunimi/pseuds/billdenbrough
Summary: Richie doesn’t care about theoretical physics, doesn’t waste his time contemplating parallel lives and all the minute variations of reality that could exist in alternate universes, but he thinks if there are infinite versions of who they are, infinite versions of their lives, there’s got to be one where they get to be happy, where they get to love each other back with no strings attached.(He doesn’t even question the idea of whether he’d love Eddie in every universe; it’s a fundamental fact of existence. Water is wet, grass is green, and Richie Tozier falls in love with Eddie Kaspbrak stealing his cigarette and stamping it out beneath his shoe.)When Eddie’s a bit fuzzy about the date the next day, they put it down to the head trauma. He got stabbed in the face, and then the chest, and then thrown across a fucking rock cave before being dragged out of a collapsing structure by terrified, desperate people; there’s no surprise it’s having some impact.After two weeks pass, though, and Eddie still wakes up with a frown, thinking it’s June 1st, Richie’s heart sinks.The universe has never cut them a break. Why would he think it would start now?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 40
Collections: Losers Library Fic Collection





	rinse & repeat

**Author's Note:**

> written for the following prompt on the [losers library](https://loserslibrary.tumblr.com/) tumblr blog:
>
>> Some post-chapter two Reddie? Maybe Eddie moving in with Richie after his divorce. i know it’s been done a hundred times but i love it everytime!!
> 
> i am so, _so_ sorry for what i did with this prompt. i had about 500 words of banter written and then i started thinking about what a post-c2 au would really constitute: where i saw it diverging from canon, how it would, and what ramifications that would have, and then i was thinking about how the losers forget at the end of the novel vs how they remember at the end of the 2019 film, and was trying to decide which i thought was more personally tragic, and then i was thinking about all the years they lost each other for, and it was this spinning cycle of love and memory and what transcends what in my head and i was thinking about it all and... this happened.

When Eddie first wakes up, they don’t realise there’s anything wrong.

In truth, they’re all just fucking grateful that he’s there. That he’s okay. There’s a lot of tears, and hugging, and Richie thinks his heart is going to burst right out of his chest. So much of their lives has been terrible, and there’s an ache in his chest that’ll never fade, a grief he doesn’t have words for when he thinks of Stan, but he thinks that maybe, just _maybe_ , the universe has given them all a break. Just this once.

When Eddie’s a bit fuzzy about the date the next day, they put it down to the head trauma. He got stabbed in the face, and then the chest, and then thrown across a fucking rock cave before being dragged out of a collapsing structure by terrified, desperate people; there’s no surprise it’s having some impact.

After two weeks pass, though, and Eddie still wakes up with a frown, thinking it’s June 1st, Richie’s heart sinks.

The universe has never cut them a break. Why would he think it would start now?

* * *

They can’t explain it to his wife. It’s not that they don’t know how to—though they really, _really_ fucking don’t—but they physically can’t. Nobody has any real idea how to find her at first, and when they do, they’re all just silent. Speechless. There’s nothing to say, nothing that can make sense of any of this, nothing that they can say to defend themselves from her panic and tears. Richie doesn’t think they deserve to, anyway. Six of them went down. They all came back out, so proud that they hadn’t left anything behind, so fucking determined not to leave _Eddie_ behind, no matter how bad it looked… and they’d left something behind anyway.

They didn’t know there were things they couldn’t carry out; they didn’t know that there was a part of Eddie that the clown would get to hold onto.

And Richie can’t help it, but he’s _angry_. He's so, _so_ angry when he looks at Myra. It’s not her fault, he _knows_ it’s not her fault, but he can’t help but think of all the years she had Eddie without anything missing, all the years she got to spend at Eddie’s side and never have to even _question_ that he wouldn’t recognise her the next day, and it just—-it just really, _really_ fucking sucks.

Myra’s not very sure of herself, but she’s sure of one thing: she’s meant to take care of Eddie. It twists at Richie’s heart, and he wants to argue, but Bev places her hands on his to calm him down. He can’t meet her eyes. He knows she saw what happened in the cistern, even if nobody else did; he knows she saw—

Richie closes his eyes, trying to block out the memory.

It turns out that Richie doesn’t need to argue with Myra; Eddie’s got that covered.

“What do you mean, he refuses?” Bill repeats back at the doctor. “He’s remembering?” Richie’s stomach feels hollow when he hears the hope in Bill’s voice, that undeniable _want_ in his voice for it to all be okay. Richie’s never managed to shoot his hope to smithereens either, but he can’t bring himself to think anything about this is ever going to go well for them. 

He thinks about Stan, and wants to throw up.

“No, he still thinks it’s June 1st,” the doctor says wearily. “I suppose on May 31st, he must have been pretty set against… well, it’s not really my place to say. But every day for the past week, without fail, he’s refused to go home with Mrs Kaspbrak.”

Richie’s heart lurches. Bev glances at him sidelong. He pretends not to see.

“Can I talk to him?” Richie asks abruptly, standing suddenly.

The doctor looks tired. “Technically, no, but given the circumstances and that the five of you are the only ones he asks for… Come with me, Mr Tozier.”

When Eddie’s eyes light up at the sight of Richie, it’s a punch in the chest all over again. Not Eddie being glad to see him—though that sight again after decades not even _knowing_ he missed it never fails to take his breath away—but _knowing_ that it’s not just because he’s a friend, but specifically because it’s _Richie_ , it was _Richie_ that Eddie kissed, _Richie_ that—

Richie that Eddie can’t remember kissing, can’t remember being honest with, can’t remember almost dying for.

It’s like a knife to the gut (though some part of Richie, the part always quipping, is saying _that should be Eddie’s line, Eddie’s joke, he earned it_ , and he did, he did, but he can’t even fucking remember, and Richie doesn’t know how to make any of this funny), that last thought, but it’s not as bad as the way Eddie’s eyes dim in a second. It hurts, thinking that because Eddie can’t remember what happened, he thinks he has to hide how he feels—-like there’s some possible version of reality where Richie Tozier doesn’t love Eddie Kaspbrak _back_.

Richie doesn’t care about theoretical physics, doesn’t waste his time contemplating parallel lives and all the minute variations of reality that could exist in alternate universes, but he thinks if there are infinite versions of who they are, infinite versions of their lives, there’s got to be one where they get to be happy, where they get to love each other back with no strings attached.

(He doesn’t even question the idea of whether he’d love Eddie in every universe; it’s a fundamental fact of existence. Water is wet, grass is green, and Richie Tozier falls in love with Eddie Kaspbrak stealing his cigarette and stamping it out beneath his shoe.)

“Did we beat it?” Eddie says, and it breaks Richie out of his reverie.

His heart clenches, but he puts on a smile. “Yeah, Eds, yeah, we did,” he says, heading to his bedside and dropping onto his knees. There’s a chair nearby, but it’s another two feet away from Eddie, and Richie doesn’t have the strength to pretend like he can resist being this close right now.

Eddie gives the floor a disgusted glance, flicking his gaze to the chair behind Richie, but his eyes are soft when he finds Richie’s face again, and Richie doesn’t know how to do this. “Good,” Eddie says with a hint of a smile on his face. “I guess I must have faded out after…” His brow furrows, the hint of laughter disappearing from his voice and expression as he tries to recapture the memories which Richie knows are out of reach.

Best as they can tell, the last concrete thing Eddie can remember is the doors, and it just absolutely fucking _kills_ Richie. Ignoring the kiss, ignoring Richie’s desperate blabbering on his knees, ignoring the way Eddie looked at him with such love and wonder and told him that he knew exactly why Eddie had done what he did, that Eddie would do it again in a _heartbeat_ —ignoring all of that, Richie is constantly furious that Eddie can’t remember what he did, that Eddie can’t remember how _brave_ he was, standing up to that clown with nothing but an iron poker and the strongest fucking heart Richie’s ever known. It’s not _fair_. None of this is fucking fair.

“You hit your head,” Richie says instead of any of the anguished, turbulent thoughts whirling in his head right now. It’s better to cut these off before Eddie gets too distressed. He’s still healing, after all. It’s not because Richie’s scared. It’s not.

He gives Eddie a tight smile. “You should rest up,” he says. “I heard you had a bit of a testy morning already.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says with a frown, “about that… how the fuck did Myra get here so quickly?”

Richie stills. He’s not been allowed to talk to Eddie much over the last few days, hasn’t had to navigate these minefields before. He doesn’t want to _lie_ to Eddie, but the doctors have cautioned them against trying to give him too much input at once. They say he might just need to give his brain some time to rest and recuperate and then it’ll naturally start healing and bringing back some of his memories. Richie knows better, though. Even if it wasn’t just a guess from the doctors, a hopeful last chance that they tried to offer Eddie’s devastated friends in the waiting room, Richie still wouldn’t believe it.

No matter how much Ben wants to hold onto hope, no matter how steady and reassuring Mike’s words are, Richie knows better. The clown would never let them win, not completely.

“We came here pretty quickly after the cistern,” Richie says carefully, the words heavy on his tongue. “Your insurance must be pretty with it, I guess? They contacted her.”

It’s true, they did; but it had taken a few days, a few blissful days where Richie let himself hope that she wouldn’t turn up at all, that Eddie would wake up one morning and remember the day before, that Eddie would be ready to _talk_ to him, to talk about the moment that changed Richie’s life.

Eddie relaxes, though the faintest hint of a frown stays between his eyebrows. “Insurance companies _should_ be quick workers,” he says, vaguely grumpy and so fucking Eddie that a rush of fondness crashes over Richie. He strokes Eddie’s hair without thinking about it, but stills after a second.

He thinks he hears Eddie’s breath hitch.

“It’s a bit annoying, though,” Eddie says, a sense of deliberateness in his voice as he continues. Richie wonders—hopes—if it’s a hint to keep going. He steels himself, and lets his fingers ruffle through Eddie’s hair once more. It’s only the slightest difference, something he can only tell because he’s watching Eddie so carefully, but something in his shoulders relax. Richie lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

“What d’you mean?” he asks, semi-distracted by the feeling of Eddie’s hair beneath his fingers.

“I thought I would have more time away from her,” Eddie murmurs, and Richie’s heart leaps into his throat. He’s not exactly surprised, given that Eddie fucking _kissed_ him thinking it would be the last thing he ever got to do, but he hadn’t been sure if his marriage being wrong for him was an epiphany brought about from a life-or-death situation, or something Eddie was cognisant of beforehand.

“Not super devoted husband of you, Eds,” Richie tries to joke, but it gets stuck in his throat, coming out with entirely more hope than he’d like.

Eddie blinks, then gives him a wry smile. “No, I guess not,” he says. “Still, though. I don’t think I love her, and I don’t know if I ever did.”

Richie’s jaw drops open.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Eddie says quietly, and Richie closes his mouth immediately.

“I’m not,” he says hastily, and then amends, “or like, I’m not judging you for it—I just didn’t really expect to hear you say it.”

Eddie looks at him carefully, dark eyes cataloguing his expression, then nods, apparently satisfied with whatever he finds there. Richie wonders what it is—wonders if the way he loves Eddie has always been telegraphed on his face, wonders if Eddie built himself on Richie’s hopeless devotion their whole lives without even knowing what it was.

Then Eddie groans, lips twisting into something which could be a smile if it wasn’t so wry. Richie doesn’t like that look on Eddie’s face—doesn’t like the way it shoots right past self-deprecating and falls straight into something sharp and jagged in Richie’s chest.

“Don’t know where I’m gonna go when I’m out, though,” Eddie says, exhaling like he’s trying to keep calm through whatever fucking paces his mind’s putting him through, and Richie thinks a complete stranger would be able to see through this shitty attempt at a façade.

Richie’s not a stranger, though, and he doesn’t let the grimness beneath Eddie’s words slide with a worried sidelong glance and wisely-kept silence. Richie is Eddie’s best friend, Richie is in _love_ with Eddie, Richie has been fluent in every twist of Eddie’s lips and wringing of his hands since they were six years old, and even though he’d let Eddie away with anything, he can’t do it this time. Not when Eddie looks like that.

Eddie’s pride matters to him, but Richie thinks, just this once, that it’s okay to think that freedom matters more.

“You can stay with me,” Richie says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and maybe it is. Maybe it doesn’t matter that this is absolutely setting himself up for heartbreak, maybe it doesn’t matter that the only thing that sounds worse than forgetting Eddie again is remembering everything while Eddie never moves forward, because at the end of the day, Eddie needs help, and Richie can give it to him.

“Wh—are you sure?” Eddie asks, blinking at Richie. It says a lot, Richie thinks, that his first words aren’t a protest. Eddie hates being taken care of, has always looked suffocated when affection runs too close to the type of ‘protection’ his mother encaged him with, and Richie can’t tell if his clear want for what Richie’s offering is just out of sheer desperation to not go back to his old life, or if it’s because it’s Richie.

A small, traitorous voice in his head suggests _maybe he remembers what happened, y’know, subconsciously_ , and Richie’s heart clenches. _Shut up_ , he orders. He can’t get his hopes up. He can’t make this about him.

“Yeah, ‘course I am,” he says instead, giving Eddie as reassuring a grin as he can muster. “You’ll be doing me a favour, anyway—sometimes it’s a bit boring, just me and my cactus.”

“I’ll water him,” Eddie promises, breaking into a smile. It’s like how the sky looks when the sun comes out, transformed into warmth and golden light, and Richie’s heart lurches. He commits the expression to his memory, and manages a grin back.

* * *

“So,” Richie says to the doctor, “Eds said he wants to stay with me. But it occurs to me—is he even going to want to in a week, or whenever he checks out?”

The doctor, to his credit, doesn’t raise any eyebrows. In fact, he seems like he expected something like this—maybe if not Richie specifically, that Eddie would be going home with one of them, and not the woman on his health insurance plan. Richie tries not to think about that.

“It’s possible he could forget,” the doctor says finally, speaking with careful deliberation. “But… if it was a decision he came to by himself—if he agreed of his own choice—then I think he’ll remember, at least when suggested again.”

Richie tilts his head, and the doctor sighs. “It hasn’t made a difference how many times he forgets the day before—he still refuses to go home with Mrs Kaspbrak,” he explains. “I don’t think anything is changing in his feelings or long-term, subconscious memories. It’s the short-term details he’s forgetting.”

Richie nods, sits with it, and tries to decide if the feeling in his chest is hope or anxiety. Maybe both.

(When Eddie says yes again, bright smile full of relief, when it’s a week later and time to check him out, Richie feels something in his gut clench. He still doesn’t know if it’s hope or not, but he guesses he’s glad he ordered a spare bed just in case.)

When they settle in a few hours later, Eddie surveys the apartment with hands on his hips.

Richie waits, heart in his throat.

“I’ll water the cactus,” Eddie says after a moment, and Richie blinks. There’s something rising in his chest, something which feels like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. He licks his lip and thinks: _oh. This is what hope tastes like._

* * *

Most days, when Eddie wakes up, disoriented and confused because his last memories were of darkness and terror and the cistern, _the doors, Richie, the doors_ , Richie soothes him by saying that they made it out, and Eddie just can’t remember because he hit his head, but he’s sure he’ll remember soon. Sometimes, it doesn’t even taste like a lie, acrid on his tongue.

Other days, when Eddie seems more panicked than usual, Richie tells him that they’d been in the hospital for a few days, but he’s okay now, they’re okay, _Eddie, you’re okay, we’re okay, everything’s okay, we won_ —

Some days, Eddie seems to know they killed the clown as soon as he wakes up. Those days are simultaneously the best and the worst, because Eddie wakes up _happy_ , and Richie has always known how to find peace etched into the curve of Eddie Kaspbrak’s smile—but Richie also knows that if he knows they killed the clown, it’s because part of him remembers what Richie’s told him every day, and all Richie can think is _it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fucking fair_ because it’s _not_ fair, it’s not fucking fair that no matter what memories bleed into Eddie’s subconscious, he never gets to remember everything. He never gets to remember Richie from that day, or from any of the days since.

* * *

(Richie leaves once. Twice. Three times.

“I can’t do it,” he says, breaking down in tears to Bev on the phone. “Bev, I swear to fucking god, I am trying, I am _trying_ , but I can’t—every day he forgets me all over again, every day I have to remind him, and I just. He _kissed_ me, and he can’t remember… he says he loves me when he’s sleep-talking and when he wakes up he thinks it’s June again, he thinks he’s _married_ again, he thinks—”

It’s around that point in the conversation that he always cuts himself off with choked sobs, and the only thing he can hear is Bev’s murmured comforting noises.

He goes back, though. He always goes back. It’s hard and horrifying and it hurts more than he can bear, seeing Eddie every day and knowing he loves Richie back, knowing he loves Richie fiercely, but knowing that he can’t remember it. It breaks Richie’s heart every day. Sometimes he thinks it breaks his spirit too.

But every time he leaves, he comes back. Say what you want about Richie Tozier, but he always comes back.)

* * *

“Richie,” Eddie says quietly, “what’s the date?”

His voice is low, but there’s a thinly disguised tremor to it, and Richie blanches as his gaze tracks down to the envelopes Eddie’s holding. Usually, Richie gets to the mail first—to anything that could indicate more time has passed than Eddie could reasonably believe—but sometimes he doesn’t.

Richie looks at Eddie, at the panic clearly building behind his dark eyes, and thinks that these are the worst days.

Then he takes a deep breath, and prepares to explain.

* * *

“Richie,” Eddie says, and the desperation in his voice shatters Richie’s heart. He looks down at Eddie, and his breath hitches. Eddie’s always been beautiful to him, but he’s never seen this expression on his face before. Urgent and reckless and terrified and desperate, like he’s got something too big to hold in his chest, like he’s dying to get it out but terrified of what it might be.

“Yeah, Eds?” He tries to keep his voice steady. These nights are equally as painful as they are thrilling. Nights like these are the ones he gets to hear, see and feel how much Eddie loves him, but nights like these also have the promise of tomorrow morning hanging over him, when Eddie won’t remember what his own heart feels.

“I don’t want to forget,” Eddie confesses, and he’s crying, he’s _crying_ , and it takes every inch of resolve and strength that Richie can muster not to burst into tears right then and there. It’s not _fair_. It’s not fucking fair. It’s not fair that Eddie never gets to live his life, that even when he survives the clown, he doesn’t get to find out what it’s like to live on his own two feet; it’s not fair that Eddie has to relive the same fucking day over and over and over, that he can’t remember that they kissed in the cistern, that he has to think to himself every day that Richie might not love him back; and it’s not fair that Richie has to know it all but never be allowed to hold onto it, that Richie has to sit here and love Eddie endlessly because it’s built into his bones, even though it hurts so much that he can’t fucking stand it.

It’s not fair that he has hope running through his bloodstream and _nothing_ he does can ever stamp it completely out.

“It’ll be okay,” Richie says, keeping his voice under control, pressing a kiss to Eddie’s forehead. Already he can see Eddie’s eyelids drooping, no matter how much he fights them; it’s been over twenty hours awake now, and after the injury, it’s just been harder and harder for Eddie to have long days. He knows it’s coming. He knows Eddie’s going to drift off soon, and forget everything. Forget him, at least in all the ways that really count.

He just has to keep smiling for a few more moments. Just enough for Eddie to fall asleep, so that he can dream of Richie smiling, so the last thing he sees is Richie telling him it’ll be okay. It’s like comforting someone who’s dying, Richie thinks, except Eddie’s not dead. He dies every day, though. He lives an entire life in a day and he never gets it back. If that’s not a type of death, what is?

Eddie finally drifts off, his breathing even, his head slumped against Richie’s chest.

Richie can’t help it. He lets the tears fall.

* * *

“Hey, Rich!” Eddie says excitedly. “Rich, we made it! We beat the clown!”

Richie shakes the sleep out of his eyes, breathes in deeply, and builds his armour up again.

“Yeah, Eds,” he says, his smile painted across his face. “We did.”

Rinse, repeat.

**Author's Note:**

> if you stuck it out this long, i hope you enjoyed it (or at least got something out of it, because i know it's not exactly the most fun story)! i'd love to hear what you thought—i don't tend to write angst for this fandom except in the rare occasions i write things within canon, just because the canon is SO tragic to me, so i really didn't expect to ever write canon-divergent angst, but here we are. honestly, i'm just really proud i managed to finish something, given how checked out i've been during these past two months of lockdown


End file.
